"Why blame..."

"Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn’t as bright as it could be." — Rob Bell (Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith)

I awoke to a terrible pain. I had gone to bed just a few hours before, and after very little sleep, I was jarred awake by this ache in my gut. Just barely moving made the pain worse, but I had to get up. I vowed to myself to never again drink so much Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper right before bed. I stumbled out of bed and made my way to the restroom to relieve my stretching bladder. As I walked into the bathroom, I made a semi-conscious decision to not turn on the light. I didn’t want to blind myself and every extra movement was making my bladder scream. I hurried as quickly as a man can at 2:00 in the morning and I was almost to the toilet when, suddenly, I felt the pain in my abdomen no more. Now, I didn’t have an accident, (so stop snickering) and it wasn’t a miracle (imagine trying to explain that one to the Pope.) I simply tricked my brain.

The human brain is an amazing organ. God created it to automatically prioritize. The brain always has the body in mind (pardon the pun.) It responds to the greatest need first, and that typically is pain. In this particular case, the pain in my bladder was no longer the priority. My brain had now shifted to my toe, which I had conveniently just slammed into the wall. It took everything in my power not to scream as my toe hit the plaster at around 200 mph. Immediately, and almost instinctively, my mind turned in rage toward the darkness. I burned with hatred toward it. This was all the dark’s fault. If I could have just seen where I was going...You get the picture!

A few minutes went by, the pain lessened, and rationale began to come to mind. The light was available at the flick of a switch, I just chose not to turn it on. It was my fault and no one else’s.

Too frequently, I find myself getting angry at the circumstances of this world. I get frustrated that things are the way they are, and my human nature screams that it’s everyone else’s fault but mine. In order to avoid accountability, I blame the left, the right, the poor, the rich, the environment, the economy, religion, philosophy and relativity. But the fault does not lie in the darkness (the world), the fault lies with the light (me!)

Jesus called us to be the “light of the world.” We are to be light in dark places. The reason that I failed to turn on the light in the bathroom was because I know that light drives out darkness, and that might hurt a little. When we fail to shine, we have no right to complain about the darkness. We must be held accountable for our own actions. So stop asking why the dark is so dark. It isn’t being exposed to the light, and that’s my fault. Instead, start asking why the light isn’t brighter.

As for me, I’m going to nurse my toe back to health and pray that I will never blame the dark, but instead I’ll ask “Is my light shining?”